


At First

by violentdarlings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Bathing/Washing, F/M, Nudity, Season/Series 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26319241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violentdarlings/pseuds/violentdarlings
Summary: When Mary returns from Apocalypse World, like always, Ketch is there.
Relationships: Arthur Ketch/Mary Winchester
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	At First

At first, Ketch can barely stay upright, before Cas goes to him, eyes flaring blue and hand raised. Ketch flinches away – “Save your strength, angel,” he says, and Mary shivers despite herself; his voice hasn’t changed, drawling and impossibly Brit. She hasn’t heard in so long any other accent than American.

“At least let me heal you enough that you can stand on your own,” Castiel says, gruff and distinctly irritated. “Or do you expect someone to carry you?”

Ketch acquiesces, albeit reluctantly. Cas touches his shoulder, and a moment later Ketch makes a noise almost like a sigh, his shoulders straightening, some of the strain in his brow smoothing over. His eyes scan his surroundings, and Mary turns away before he can see her looking. She doesn’t want him to think his health is even the slightest bit something she is concerned about.

She’d known he was here, of course; there’s not too many men like Ketch in the world, even in this one. But he’d been with Charlie, running rogue ops to rescue the stragglers caught by the angels, and Mary hadn’t had the chance to do more than trade glances with him, once, his eyes clear and cold, as if he could see straight through her to the other side.

They don’t linger long in the angels’ base and get back to camp, and Mary has Dean to speak to, Lucifer to warily eye.

Ketch is there, in the periphery of her vision; beaten so badly that the infirmary nurse clucks over him at once. “Calm yourself, man,” Mary hears him say, even as he’s lying on the cot, arms tucked tightly around himself. “I’m not dead yet.”

But he had been; Mary herself had put a bullet in his brain. Dean had told her hastily about the Resurrection Seal that had brought Ketch back, that he is slightly less of a dick now than he was before, but they hadn’t had time for much more than that, because there’d been Michael, and getting through the portal, and suddenly being back in the bunker with her new-old family all around her, raising a toast to her boys. Her boys, both over six feet tall and built like brick outhouses; Dean and Sammy, her babies lost to time. Sometimes her body aches for them, for Sam who was still on the breast when Azazel killed her, for Dean, who used to come into her arms without restraint. She can’t even blame John, for how they’ve turned out. they’re heroes, they’ve saved the world.

They’re just not her babies anymore.

When she’s lightly buzzed enough that walking doesn’t seem like the most painful thing in the world, she makes her way from the library further into the bunker complex. She’s not sure what she wants, or what she needs, but she can’t bear the thought of being surrounded by people anymore; strangers with familiar faces.

She takes enough turns until she’s confident no one is following her, and heads towards one of the wet areas equipped with bathtubs and showers, a vague thought about cleaning up in her head. She enters the room, and comes to a swift halt.

A deliciously hot bath along one side of the room, tendrils of pale steam rising from the water, like it’s been put there just for her.

Mary doesn’t even think, that’s how tired she is. She strips off her ragged flannel and tank in one motion, kicks off her boots and her filthy socks before hooking a finger in the loose band of her jeans and getting rid of those too. And then it’s just bliss, pure bliss, sinking into hot water just the right temperature, warm enough to start to unfreeze her bones but not so hot as to be scalding.

Mary closes her eyes, tension starting to seep out of her muscles, and sighs quietly. She’s back, maybe this time for good, with her boys. Maybe it really doesn’t get any better than this.

“You’ve stolen my bath.”

Her eyes don’t fly open, per se, but she does flinch, just a little. Mary turns her head almost one-eighty degrees, only to see, in the shadowed corner of the open shower area, a figure crumpled against the wall. Ketch. Of course it’s Ketch.

“Lurking again?” she inquiries, and even she can hear the brittleness in her voice. “Spying on people from the shadows. How typical.” There’s a rough sound that might be a laugh, or a sob.

“Merely waiting for the water to cool,” he replies, and Mary crosses her arms over her chest, for all that he’s on the wrong angle to be able to see her body in the water. Still, she’d stripped openly enough, and her skin crawls at the thought of Ketch’s cool eyes being able to make out every detail of her body, ravaged as it is by childbirth and hunting and her recent starvation diet in the other world. She looks like she’s just escaped from a concentration camp, and she’d bet her life that Ketch noticed every single flaw.

Her eyes are adjusting to the low light, and she can make out details of her own now; his eyes as cold as ever, the awkward set of his broad shoulders, the deep lacerations on his chest and the ginger way he cradles his left arm. He’s bare-chested, but still in his mission trousers, feet incongruously bare, and it’s that that sparks a sharp burst of irrational fury deep in Mary’s chest. What right does he have, to have feet like any ordinary man, after what he’s done. How dare he be normal, be human, how dare he flaunt his bruised face and lacerated chest like he’s done _something_ , something worth admiring, something worth her time.

“Avert your eyes,” she tells him sharply, and there’s no mistaking it this time when he laughs, low and deep and rasping.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” he rumbles. “You could be Aphrodite incarnate and I still wouldn’t pitch a tent for you right now, Mary. I’m not sure I have enough blood left in my body to even get to half-mast.” His voice is amused, lighter than she remembers it. Odd. Odder still, how her oldest son regards Ketch with a mixture of irritation and wearied tolerance, instead of outright loathing and disdain. Something has happened, while Mary was in the other world; something has changed.

She’s not naïve enough to think that Arthur Ketch could ever turn good. It’s just that…

He doesn’t look quite like he did before.

“You were more attractive when you were a brainwashed assassin,” Mary snips out before she can stop herself. She wants to sink into the ground, when Ketch tips back his head to laugh, the lines of his throat tautened. Mirth takes years off his face.

“Not so brainwashed as I couldn’t tell right from wrong,” he says, letting his head thunk back against the tiled wall. So not a laugh at her expense, then; something loosens in Mary’s chest. At his own.

“Lady Bevell was your programmer, right?” Mary asks, sinking down into the water, purposefully not looking over her shoulder at Ketch. She was getting a crick in her neck anyway, from turning her head so far to the side.

“For three out of five rounds,” Ketch replies. She hears the rattle of his breath in his chest even at a distance, like he might be ill. “I received the first at fourteen, and then at twenty. She was not a programmer then.” Mary whistles sharply, surprised despite herself.

“Fourteen, huh? Let me guess, you pissed in the holy water?” she asks, only half joking, eyes slipping shut. But there is no answer, and eventually Mary realises Ketch hasn’t spoken. “Ketch?” She peers over her shoulder.

Ketch’s body is locked tight, his face red like he’s just run a marathon. His fists are clenched in his lap and he is breathing in short, sharp bursts. “Ketch!” Mary says, alarmed, and he looks in her direction, although Mary doubts he sees her at all. “Are you okay?” Ketch shakes his head.

“I’m not supposed… to talk about it,” he grits out. “But my brother –” He stops, throat working, evidently unable to make another sound.

“You were programmed because of your brother,” Mary guesses. Ketch manages a single, sharp nod. “Because he did something?”

“ _They_ did something,” Ketch spits out, then doubles over as though he is in physical pain. Maybe he is. “They did something to Alex –”

“That’s enough, Ketch,” Mary says, and infuses it with just enough battlefield general to stand Ketch down. He stops trying to talk, but his chest is heaving and he can’t catch his breath. “For God’s sake, you don’t need to tell me.” Ketch shakes his head violently.

“I _want_ to tell you,” he says, on the tail end of a noise like a keen. “I should be able to. _You_ broke out.” Mary shrugs. She can’t look at him. She might actually start to see him as a human being.

“Thirty years of programming is a bit more than four weeks.” She doesn’t mention that sometimes she slips back into that cold place that Antonia Bevell put inside her head. It came in handy in the Other World, but it’s not relevant, not here.

Ketch looks so damn miserable huddled against the wall like a kicked dog that it’s harshing Mary’s buzz. She leans over the edge of her tub, shielding her breasts with her arm, and use her free hand to turn the water on in the other bathtub. The pipes groan, but clear water hisses out of the faucet.

“What are you doing?” Ketch asks. He sounds so tired. Mary blinks away a bit of dust in her eyes and settles back into her own bath, safe again underneath the milky water. It smells good, like clean earth and growing things, a world away from burnt flesh and cratered rock. It’s almost like this is the only world worth mattering about.

“Shut up, Ketch,” Mary says drowsily, and gives herself over to the warmth.

When she opens her eyes, the water has cooled, and Ketch is nowhere to be found.


End file.
